


the root of it all

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The kid didn't know what it was like. Through the many horrors of each skirmish and battle, he had taken friendly comfort in Tommy's sheer presence whilst Fundy bent over backwards to only end up condescended to or alone. A lesser man might have been jealous.---a short final character study of fundy before the wedding video comes out---decanonised recently by word of god (kind of glad? the shippers were overstaying their welcome, which is to say they were here at all) but still up as a character study
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Floris | Fundy, Floris Fundy & Cara | CaptainPuffy, Floris | Fundy & Alexis | Quackity, Floris | Fundy & Niki | Nihachu, Floris | Fundy & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Floris | Fundy & TommyInnit, Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55
Collections: Anonymous





	the root of it all

"Wait, what else is happening this weekend?" Tubbo asked absently, pinching the bridge of his nose as they watched Quackity slip away to brood. Fundy tried his damnedest not to mind. The President was just a kid, after all, and he was busy-there were a thousand excuses to forget.

There was the familiar sugared sting of frustration. He ignored it as always, which was as darkly ironic as always, and took a deep stabilising breath.

"You know I'm getting married, right?" he said frankly, and Tubbo's face froze. It was almost comically careful, in a way Fundy didn't at all appreciate, and he ran his tongue over his teeth to disguise how widely they were bared.

"Ah. So you are."

That was just him, though. It wasn't any degree of insult when Tubbo forgot important dates, merely a reaffirmation of the laws of nature. Fundy almost managed to convince himself of this before the L'Manbergian coattails disappeared over the ridge. But not quite. Because Tubbo had been, for however brief a moment, disappointed. Such a barb could not be so easily ignored.

The kid didn't know what it was like. Through the many horrors of each skirmish and battle, he had taken friendly comfort in Tommy's sheer presence whilst Fundy bent over backwards to only end up condescended to or alone. A lesser man might have been jealous.

Hell, it wasn't like Tubbo was the only one. Quackity had openly laughed at the idea - the one remaining antagonist of the server, the one major player who was less morally grey than fucking monochrome in his malice, stooping to the low that was Fundy Soot. It wasn't even a cruel laugh, was the issue. Pitying, and patronising, but genuine, as if he knew something a grown-ass fox didn't. As if he hadn't betrayed the spirit of L'Manberg in a heartbeat for an ounce of Schlatt's scarce goodwill. The thing was, someone like Quackity just couldn't understand.

None of them fucking understood.

When pushed, Tommy was excruciatingly Tommy about the whole affair. Ever since exile had been put on the table, his customary mania had evolved into a state of jittery and constant furore.

"You doing alright there, furboy? You look like shit. No, actually, you look like someone _took_ a shit, and like, smeared it over-"

"No, I'm actually doing great," Fundy interrupted, rubbing at his temples. "Thank you so much as ever for your input, Tommy." He took the proffered report - homework, as he liked to call it - and scanned through the pages of dense chickenscratch without even lingering on the many obscenities.

Tommy noticed.

"Mardy bastard," he said amicably, scrunching up his nose as if even mild concern required a foundation of plausible deniability. "You worried about the green bitch?" Fundy was ashamed of the way his head snapped up at that. The teenager grinned, a couple molars too wide, and crossed his arms to lean against cracked blackstone. "He's too old for you, anyway. I don't care if it's different for foxes! I'm UncleInnit, alright, an' UncleInnit says it's pretty fucked up."

Wilbur's view was as rancidly optimistic as ever, which was at first almost pleasant in comparison to the alternative. Perhaps there would even be a father's blessing, Fundy thought wryly.

"I just think love is so special and good," he rambled with signature ragged gruffness, trying to make Fundy laugh by chugging invisibility potions and puppeting tools through the air as if of their own accord. It wasn't working as intended.

"You think so?"

"I know so, my darling boy. Love, you see," he paused to giggle, voice distant, "love, it makes the world go around." _What a poet. Before his time._

 _Around what?_ thought Fundy tiredly, but he nodded anyway. That was generally the way to deal with enthusiastic dead dads. As the server's leading authority, he should know.

He leapt upwards to snatch his pickaxe out of the sky - to much callow despondency in the form of Wilbur's grumbling - and tuned back in to the ongoing rant. "-o I suppose, what I'm saying is, if you love this fellow, trust him! The people you love, they, they don't hurt you. Not unless you're bad." Fundy winced and yanked down the brim of his hat. "Like me! I was _so_ shitty, or so I hear. Anyway, see, these shovels..."

And that was enough of bonding with Wilbur for one day, because holy fucking shit, man, but the nonsense words he spat like truisms stuck with Fundy as stubbornly as they always had.

_The people you love don't hurt you. Not unless you're bad._

Because Fundy really had trusted Dream. It wasn't the shallow, playground friends kind of trust - there had never been time for those between all the fighting and training and absent parents. It was a silent and wordless sentiment, the kind that said something important by virtue of its own continued existence. Something like, "we have grown up on opposing sides of a seemingly endless struggle for power, and it broke the both of us in little large ways, and I am so fucking tired of it, and I will give you the dominion you want if you give me the agency I need." And that kind of raw transaction was, at its most clinical and disconnected, at least something that a mind like Dream's could comprehend.

Part of Fundy expected the fall to come even before there were signs. His parents had loved him desperately as a child and then not at all, and it would be jejune to pretend there was no reason for the change. The people you love don't hurt you. Not unless you're bad. And in some way he could not understand from the inside, some way other people recognised on sight that stained his fur like dark oil, Fundy was bad.

It was the flowers, at the root of it all.

Some people on the server were hopeless romantics, drawn by the bombast of grand gestures. Most were more withdrawn in their ministrations, and yet others doled out affection as if rationing it amidst some lurking conflict. Dream was decidedly a member of the third group, and so Fundy was decidedly confused at the random appearance of a fresh bouquet of blossoms from the girls' new shop.

He was confused for two reasons.

First, Dream knew full well that Fundy was as reserved as he was when it came to public acknowledgement of their already politically-fraught relationship. It was an unpleasant reminder of the conflict that bubbled quietly under the shining veneer of peacetime. So to see him standing in the new town square with a fistful of flowers, arms clumsily outstretched as if he were someone much weaker offering something much heavier, was new. Endearing, but off-putting from a man of such routine. When war criminals deviated from their routine you worried - fiancé or no fiancé.

Second, Fundy was a literal fox. And as a result he could hear very well indeed, and he was looking down at the beautiful posy through a wet miasma of held tears and hiccuping breaths. Because Dream had not bought them for him.

"George will love these!" he had exclaimed in the instant before Fundy had rounded the corner. Almost falling over a crate of tulips in her effort to melt into the wall, Puffy could not meet his gaze when he turned. Her own ears twitched sympathetically as Niki cooed over the impromptu meetcute in a way that felt supportive, but misguided.

As if buoyed anyway by her chatter, Dream cocked his head in the way he did instead of smiling. He tapped two fingers on the mouth of his mask, a hollow ringing sound, and patted Fundy on the cheek before pearling silently away. Nobody spoke.

The flowers in his paws were pretty, healthy things. Bright red poppies. Restful sleep, recovery and death. Lily of the Valley. Humility, rebirth, and luck in love. For Prime's sake. He locked eyes with Niki and her stricken expression confirmed what could, until then, have been baseless paranoia.

When he touched his face where Dream had, the fur there was inexplicably dry of tears. But that was alright. An odd sense of peace descended over Fundy, a comfortable blanket of fuzzy apathy that even Ranboo noticed from the other side of the shop. What a funny gag! What a twist of words! He was a man of few words, was Dream.

Fundy absently crushed poppy seeds between his claws and wondered what exactly, without words, without gestures, without trust, love was.

**Author's Note:**

> according to ao3 statistics only total cool people leave comments


End file.
